North Woods | Daniel Mason

This book is on pretty much every list of the Best Books of 2023, including the NY Times 10 Best Books of the Year. Let's just say it had a lot to live up to. And boy, does it ever live up to the hype. Just reading the author bio tells you that Daniel Mason is one smart, clever guy. He's written several notable novels, and won or been shortlisted for some pretty prestigious awards (Guggenheim, Joyce Carol Oates, oh, and the Pulitzer). And his day job is an assistant professor at the Stanford University department of psychiatry.

The story centers around a yellow house in a remote rural area of Western Massachusetts, the people in and around it and the events. Instead of telling history through people, he's using the house as the focus. It starts pre-Revolutionary War and ends in near-current times. The language for each time period mirrors the vocabulary and cadence of the times, which allows the reader to sink into the time period. It's one of the few times I've been enticed to look up unfamiliar words (I'm usually a context, fake-it-till-you-make-it kind of reader). The writing is incredibly visual and Mason has an uncanny gift for describing nature. If this were to become a screenplay, there would be notes aplenty on how to write in the scenery. And funny? There's a section where he's describing the mating of beetles in the forest that is downright hilarious. The book is incredible, like a tapestry with lots of layers and textures, shades and tones.